I never once got into their relationship or felt their love for one another and yet at the end it seemed like a huge part of the story and yet it wasn’t. Our two lovebirds fall in love at first site, and then they share two more cute moments, and that’s about it. The important and interesting aspects of the story are not given enough time to develop or be interesting.

The love story was underdeveloped for a lot of the same reasons. The government, or whatever it’s called in the story, is big brother cranked to twenty, and yet they couldn’t find the underground movement… under the ground. We do this because big brother wants us to do this and that’s not what we want. Instead, it just kept adding details and factoids to the world. It never got the chance to show why you should slow down and enjoy life nor did it show how great disconnecting from technology could be. There was something disingenuous about the message of the book. Every time it would seemingly offer a twist in the story, it would veer right back to where it was going. There’s nothing that is surprising about the story. There she meets the underground resistance, people that want to move slow and enjoy the pauses life offers. Eventually, Angela heads to a tree to find something her grandfather buried for her, but while looking for the object, she’s grabbed and pulled underground. She’s also been given a book, a physical copy, that predicted the speeding up of society and it’s greatly changed her outlook on life. Our main character Angela is fifteen and hitting that phase in which the world sucks, and she’s figured that out. In fact, any term that’s related or implies speed is a “good” word to use. It’s “hyper” which is a term the story uses in place of cool. We eat fast food we sleep standing, we use shells to fuck (not really in there) and when we finish our sentence, we say “GO” to indicate to everyone else that we’re done talking. It’s the future, and everything is moving quickly. I know that the very mention of Shakespeare in the story made me pause and hope for a better ending than I was sure to get. Yes, Shakespeare, which probably has already given away a lot of the story. The story is part Fahrenheit 451, a sprinkle of Philip K. That’s a cool concept… and that is not a cool concept… oh, I like that… oh, I don’t like that. It seems that just the very tips of the paper were actually blue which seemed like a weird thing to do and an even bigger opportunity that ended up being missed. The paper was also blue which made me excited to open the book up and see… white pages. The first came from the cover which is almost entirely blue. For everything cool or interesting it did, it managed to do an equal amount of disinterest. Decelerate Blue sat in the middle for most of my reading. Whatever side ends up with the most weight on it effects the review the most and ultimately decides the score. Often when I’m reviewing a comic, it’s an intricate dance of scales.

Decelerate blue